The two stricken men parted then, one going down the road with slouched shoulders and aimless gait, feeling more than such a type of such years and so circumstanced often has to feel, but devising nothing, suffering but not fighting. There was no fight in him—none left—his interview with Bransby had used it all up—to the last atom.

Richard Bransby sat alone with his trouble, cut, angry, at bay—already devising, weighing, fighting, twisting and turning the bit of jade in his nervous fingers. He rose and pulled open a drawer of his table and laid the ledger in it with a quiet that was pathetic. For a moment he stood looking at the book sadly.

How much that book had meant to this man only just such men could gauge. It was his libra d’ora, his high commission in the world’s great financial army, and his certificate of success in its far-flung battle front. It was his horoscope, predicted and cast in his own keen boy’s heart and head, fulfilled in his graying old age. It was the record of over forty years of fierce fight, always waged fairly, of a business career as stiff and sometimes as desperate and as venturesome as Napoleon’s or Philip’s, but never once smirched or touched with dishonor—no, not with so much as one shadow of shame. He had fought—ah! how he had fought, from instinct, for Alice, for Helen—and, by God! yes, lately for Violet’s boys too—he had fought, and always he had fought on and on to success: bulldog and British in tenacity, he had been Celtic-skillful, and many a terrible corner had he turned with a deft fling of wrist and a glow in his eye that might have been envied—and certainly would have been applauded and loved—on Wall Street, or that fleeter, less scrupulous street of high-finance—La Salle. It was his escutcheon—all the blazon he had ever craved—and now——He closed the drawer swiftly and softly. Many a coffin lid has been closed with pain less profound.

Then his quiet broke, and for a moment the frozen tears melted down his trembling face, and the terrible sobs of manhood and age thwarted and hurt to the quick shook his gaunt body. A cry broke from him—a cry of torture and love. “Hugh—Hugh!”

For a few moments he let the storm have its will of him; he had to. Then his will took its turn, asserted itself and he commanded himself again.

Bransby turned quietly away with a sigh. For a space he stood in deep thought. Quite suddenly a pain and a faintness shot through him, bullet-quick, nerve-racking. He forgot everything else—everything: which is perhaps the one pleasant thing that can be said of such physical pain; it banishes all other aches, and shows heart and head who is their master.

White to his lips, pure fright in his eyes, Bransby contrived to reach a chair by a side-table on which a tantalus stood unobtrusively. It always was there. There was one like it in his bedroom, and another in his private room at the office. And Richard Bransby was an abstemious man, caring little for his meat, nothing at all for his drink. Tobacco he had liked once, but Latham had stinted him of tobacco. With the greatest difficulty he managed to pour out some brandy—and to gulp it. For a short space he sat motionless with closed eyes. But some one was coming.

With a tremendous effort he pulled himself together. He got out of the chair, tell-tale near that tantalus, and with the criminal-like secretiveness of a very sick man, pushed his glass behind the decanter. He had sauntered to another seat, moving with a lame show of nonchalance, and taking up his old plaything, when the footsteps he had heard came through the door.

It was Horace Latham. “Alone?”

“Oh! is that you, doctor? Come in—come in. Have a cigar?”

The physician stood behind his host, smiling, debonair, groomed to a fault, suspiciously easy of manner, lynx-eyes apparently unobservant, he himself palpably unconcerned. “Thanks,” he said—“I find a subtle joy in indulging myself in luxuries which my duties compel me to deny to others.” He chose a cigar—very carefully—from the box Bransby had indicated. But he diagnosed those Havanas with his touch-talented finger-tips. His microscope eyes were on Bransby.

Bransby knew this, or at least feared it, though Latham stood behind him.

Still fighting desperately against his weakness (he had much to do just now; Latham must not get in his way), he said, doing it as well as he could, “Oh, I—I don’t mind—next to smoking myself—I like to watch some one else enjoying a good cigar.”

Latham’s face did not change in the least, nor did his eyes shift. He came carelessly around the table, facing his host now, never relaxing a covert scrutiny, as bland as it was keen. “In order,” he said, “to give you as much pleasure as possible I shall enjoy this one thoroughly. Can you give me a match?”

“Of course. Stupid of me.” Bransby caught up a match-stand with an effort and offered it. Latham pretended not to see it. Bransby was forced to light a match. He contrived to, and held it towards Latham, in a hand that would shake. The physician threw his cigar aside with a quick movement, and caught his friend’s wrist, seized the flaming match and blew it out.

“I knew it,” Latham said sternly. “Bransby, you are not playing fair with me. You’ve just had another of those heart attacks.”

“Nonsense,” the other replied with uneasy impatience.

“Then why are you all of a tremble? Why is your hand shaking? Why is your pulse jumping?”

“I had a slight dizziness,” Bransby admitted wearily.

“What caused it?” Latham asked sharply.

“Grant brought me some bad news from the office.”

“Well—what of it? The air is full of bad news now. You can afford to lose an odd million now and then. But what business had Grant here? What business had you to see him? You promised me that you would not even think of business, much less discuss it with any one, until I gave you leave.”

“This was exceptional.”

The physician sat down, his eyes still on his patient, and said, his voice changed to a sudden deep kindness, “Bransby, I am going to be frank with you—brutally frank. You’re an ill man—a very ill man indeed. A severe attack of this—‘dizziness’ as you call it—will—well, it might prove fatal. Your heart’s beat shown by the last photograph we had taken by the electric cardigraph was bad—very bad.”

“I’ve heard all this before.”

“And have paid no heed to it. Bransby, unless you give me your word to obey my instructions absolutely, I will wash my hands of your case.”

“Don’t say that.” In spite of himself Bransby’s voice shook.

“I mean it.” Latham’s voice came near shaking too, but professional training and instinct saved it. “Well?”

“This—this news I have just had—I must make a decision concerning it. It can’t cause me any further shock. As soon as I have dismissed it, and I will very soon, I give you my word, I’ll do precisely as you say.”